Not having seen the episode at this juncture, and basing my response purely on what you folks (and people on LJ) have said - I'm thinking that an awful lot of the concept squick would be ameliorated if the Actives were a diverse bunch. Maybe 50/50 men and women, and a range of ages and attractiveness. (And ethnicities.) I mean, sure, all in peak physical fitness and ready to kick a little ass, but just PEOPLE. Not malleable fembots.

To some extent it sounds like Joss wants to go for what JJ Abrams did with Alias - and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Sydney's exciting array of wigs and outfits, and getting to watch Garner play a whole array of people (and a whole array of emotions, as Sydney - damn, she killed me in the pilot, when she found her fiance's body, but she could also bring the funny and the competent and the vulnerable and just ACT DAMNED WELL, imho, as well as kicking ass with aplomb). But Sydney had agency and skills and a personality of her own, and motivations, whereas Echo - not so much. Which still has the potential to be an interesting story about identity and awareness and all that - in a Matrixy/Bourne Identity/Truman Show kinda way, but, damn, I think it's going to be a hard sell. And it doesn't sound like Eliza's starting from a position of having fantastic acting chops (much as I enjoyed the hell out of Faith).

I agree with memfault above, who said this concept would have made a great one-off episode for another show.

Still hoping it will work, but not feeling the love at this point.

Fay, there do seem to be male actives, as there were some men getting into the sleep pods/taking showers, we haven't seen Echo interact with them.

I'm looking forward to next week's ep, which was the original pilot, wonder if some of our issues will be addressed.

Kevin says next week isn't the pilot:

Next week's episode is episode 3, "The Target". It's not the intended pilot - Fox refused to pony up to reshoot certain bits, so it's in the bin. Then it's on to epiosde 5, then episode 2

Hmm, I could have sworn that I read it somewhere. Oh, well, i'm perfectly willing to concede.

I think I saw one male Active.

See, I'm thinking there should be maybe slightly more blokes than women, even, if anything, and that there should be plenty of people in their 30s and 40s, and a few who are older.

Coming in quite late... I noticed at least two male Actives, but they were beefcakey.

In general, I wasn't thrilled, but then I wasn't thrilled by "The Train Job," either, so I'm reserving judgment. My father, who was in and out of the room, said it seemed "dense," which I did like about it. There were a whole lot of storylines packed into such a short time.

I totally fast-forwarded past the Dushku-Glau promos. I've only ever seen Browder and Black do that convincingly.

Next weeks episode was definitely, 100% produced as episode 3. It's written by Steve Deknight, and is the first episode where FOX seemed to think the show may work. Hence why it's moved forward in the airing order. They've also moved Tim's first episode forward in the running order slightly.

"Echo", the original pilot, is gone. Several plot elements no longer make sense in it, as they've gone a different direction with (some of) the characters and setup. "Echo" is a curious episode to be honest, as it is toneily (is that a word?) very different - it 'feels' like a Whedon show. It also connects a lot more of the dots, makes it clear there are Male dolls, and connects the different elements together more (e.g. Paul and Echo). It's a shame they lost it.

There are male dolls which can hired, they're visible in the background of the Dollhouse at this point. Also, the case file marked "ALPHA" seen at the end of the episode, follows the naming conventions for the dolls (echo, sierra etc), and you see a Naked Man (any HIMYM fans?) at the end of the episode.

Here's the episode vs production order for the 6 episodes FOX has committed to airing:

Episode 1 - Feb 13 - "Ghost" (2nd episode shot - Joss)

Episode 2 - Feb 20 - "The Target" (4th episode shot - Steve Deknight)

Episode 3 - Feb 27 - "Gray Hour" (3rd episode shot - Elizabeth & Sarah)

Episode 4 - Mar 06 - "Stage Fright" (5th episode shot - Jed Whedon and Maurissa)

Episode 5 - Mar 13 - "True Believer" (7th episode shot - Tim)

Episode 6 - Mar 20 - "Man on the Street" (6th episode shot - Joss)

Note that this one is revised since I covered it on Dollverse, as it looks like they swapped 3 and 4 around again.

toneily

tonally